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291th December 10530.)!!!
30th December 7530')!!!
1998 Perrier Award Nominee
QUEENS HALL CLERK ST EDINBURGH nouns mores Box Office 0131 668 2019 0131 667 7776
58 YHELIST 17 Dec 1998—7 Jan 1999
Enemy Of The State (18) 128 mins ***
Much as it would like to be, this flashy techno thriller is not a Three Days Of The Condor for the 90s. Neither, despite the deia vu presence of Gene Hackman, is it The Conversation 2. A slick, entertaining stab at updating the 70s conspiracy thriller, Enemy Of The State lacks the political undertow of such paranOia-induong classics, and is closer in tone to Hitchcock's North 8y Northwest. And for all Will Smith's easy charm, his bemused Everyman lacks the sophisticated intelligence that Robert Redford and Cary Grant brought to their characters
A chance meeting With an old college friend plunges the unWitting Smith into a dangerous, convoluted conspiracy involwng a rogue National Security Agency boss With an agenda of his own. Because of an incriminating VIdQO
Someone watching over me: Will Smith in Enemy Of The State
tape, liberal lawyer Smith’s family life is electronically invaded and sys- tematically dismantled: his phone is tapped, his house bugged, his credit cards cancelled, and surveillance satel- lites monitor his every move, His only hope is ex-CIA surveillance expert Hackman, a disillusioned recluse who vanished and went underground in the mid-70s,
Without ever neglecting the solid per- formances, director Tony Scott has a field day with the rough, scratchy digital imagery used to evoke ubiq- uitous surveillance — it’s like watching the credits sequence of Seven for two hours straight. Although it may not bear comparison With the likes of All The President’s Men, this is perhaps the best we can hope for from the modern, blockbuster-obsessed Hollywood. (Nigel Floyd)
a General release from Sat 26 Dec. See feature
Carry the con: Isabelle Huppert in Riven Ne Va Plus
Rien Ne Va Plus (15) 105 mins it it 4r A couple of con artists (the tWitchy Michel Serrault, the deadpan Isabelle Huppert) enter the big time as Huppert hitches up With FrancOis Cluzet in the SWiss ski resort, Sils Maria Busmessman Cluzet has a swtcase With five million SWiss francs in it, Huppert reckons she can wrestle it from him
Such is the premise for occasional master Claude Chabrol's 50th film, a comedy thriller so sedate it's unlikely to raise the heartbeat of even a man of Chabrol's advanced years
It is, essentially, and like most of Chabrol's work, an expository thriller where actions aren't shown but instead diSCUSSGd When one character
is speared in the eye, Huppert Witnesses the aftermath and then relates the gory details to Serrault.
Chabrol chooses not to show the
action itself
The comedic, then, comes with the way Chabrol inverts the expectations of the thriller format as if his famed belief in man's innate selfishness finds its correlative in an aloof style which cares little for those old dramatic constructs like identification and empathy There's so little attempt to engage the audience dramatically that some wrll take Chabrol for an amateur Others may see a subtle, bloody minded ironist at work.
(Tony McKibbin)
53 Glasgow Film Theatre from Sun
27 -Wed 30 Dec.